Weltklasse Overview, rain does not deter great night of track and field!

This is Stuart Weir’s overview of the 2024 Weltklasse meeting in Zurich at the Letzigrund stadium in Zurich, Switzerland, held on September 4-5, 2024.

Weltklasse Overview

Weltklasse means world-class, and the Zurich Diamond League always lives up to its name.  This year, the weather did not get the memo, and the usual late summer sunshine was replaced by rain, making the track and run-ups very wet.

Mondo Duplantis was a double winner.  Of course, he won the pole vault with 5.82 just 24 hours after winning the Scandinavian 100 challenge against Karsten Warholm.  Remember a few years ago at the Brussels Diamond League, Mondo wanted to race Shelly-Ann?

Mondo won the sprint – with the loser having to race the next day in the national colors of the winner’s nation.  It was a fun race, it might have been, but it was accomplished at a significant cost by both athletes.  Mondo explained that he had quit the pole vault at 5.82 because “my body felt wrecked after yesterday´s race. Plus, the weather was freezing. So that was a bad combination. The sprint yesterday was very impressive. For both of us, it was a great experience. It was super amazing. I think we built a super event; it was very new and innovative. And for just being a pre-event show for today. I do not see why there could not be more events like this”.

Warholm, wearing his obligatory Swedish shirt, announced his withdrawal from the 400h: “I would have loved to be in tonight’s 400h, but I felt my hamstring a little bit after the race yesterday. I tried to do a little warm-up today, but I did not sprint properly, so it is not worth the risk. I hope the bet is done now. I will wear this Swedish jersey, and people will take pictures and make fun of me. But I hope that I can leave this behind me because I do not want to make a fool of myself twice”.

Beatrice Chebet, the Olympic 5000m and 10,000m champion,  won the 5k comfortably but came up just short in her bid to break the world record, settling for a world-leading 14:09.52 – and a meeting record by some distance, shattering compatriot Vivian Cheruiyot’s 14:30.10 from 2011. Chebet said: “I really wanted to run the world record, but the pacemaker dropped out earlier than planned. It was not easy after that.”